8 Engaging Christmas Activities for Your Toddlers

Finding activities that are Christmas oriented and will entertain the younger crowd can sometimes be tricky. There are many different age groups you need to please and toddlers are particularly hard to keep busy because Christmas is an incredibly exciting time of year for them.

Whether Christmas has religious significance for you or is a time where you celebrate giving gifts, companionship and time to your family, these eight tips may help you wear out the little ones by the time Santa's on his way:

1. Make finger painting with bright colors. Plenty of red and green poster paint and eager fingers make for festive art projects.

2. Christmas tree decoration. Let them have their own small artificial tree to decorate as they please. They can wrap popcorn string around it or even craft their own ornaments. The fun is endless!

3. Explore the signs of winter. Gather pine cones and leaves that are falling off the trees in your backyard.

4. Make Christmas cookies. Let them use Christmas cookie cutters and decorate them themselves with white frosting and red and green sprinkles. Santa’s going to love these.

5. Teach your children the true meaning of Christmas. If you have a Nativity Scene at home, use the figures to tell them the Christmas story.

6. Make your own decorations. You can help either to paint dried pasta shapes or make paper chains out of spare wrapping paper, little fingers will be able to make something that will leave them so pleased.

7. Make potato stamps. Various stamps could be made in the shapes of stars, Christmas trees and other seasonal items. If you have a large sheet of sugar paper, they could even make their own wrapping paper.

8. Use the waste boxes. Shopping for so many gifts means an inevitable buildup of boxes and packaging materials. Use the debris to make an exciting fort for toddlers to explore and hide in.

About the Author

Dorothy Hastings is the Director of First School, which are three preschool and child care centers located throughout Southern California. First School provides a hands-on approach to preschool education and Child Care Programs that emphasizes all around child development. In addition to their intuitive academic approach

You need to be a member of The Educator's PLN to add comments!

Nice post Dorothy. Toddlers do get a feeling of boredom when they see all the grown ups too busy in their celebration modes and thinking this way is the best way to engage them as well as to make them explore their creativity as well. Finger painting thing is the one which every kid's gonna love and enjoy.

"In the elementary school that I work in, we are VERY limited to the availability of technology. Our 185 students have to share around 80 laptops and chromebooks. And when we do get to use them, it is for a short period of time."